Search our Repository

Paper Details

Order a high quality custom written paper

This revision paper should be used as a source of ideas / reasoning / inspiration for your own research. You should never submit it as your own work.
Need something custom and original? Choose from a wide range of academic writing tasks and get the one you need.

* Once your purchase is processed by paypal you will be redirected back to this page and you'll have
the option to download the paper. We'll also send the paper to your paypal email address as proof of purchase.

Will An Interest In Music Be A Fitness Indicator For Men?

Question

Attraction and creativity: will an interest in music be a fitness indicator for men

This is a research study I designed and conducted for an advanced research methods psychology class. The subject matter concerns 'Attraction and Creativity' and is based on theory of evolution, and psychology of music. The research paper itself must be written in the format of a journal article found in peer reviewed psychology journals with an introduction which includes literature review which is the theoretical foundation for the research Im conducting, a methods and procedure section, a results section (with data and analysis which I will insert myself) and a conclusion summarising the findings (which are in support of the hypothesis).

I am interested at looking at what characteristics people find most attractive.

Specifically, I was looking at whether peoples interest in music made them seem more attractive than people who had other interests.

In this study the participants (n=200) watched a video where a person described their interests. All the men saw the same woman, and all the women saw the same man. The only thing that varied for each of the participants was the gender and the interest that the person described in the video. Note: each participant only watches one video which is randomly assigned from 5 conditions. All male subjects view a same female (a confederate) and all female subjects view same male (a confederate).

This means that they watched a video where a person described either an interest in music, literature, sports, video games or movies (5 conditions X 2 Gender factorial design). In this study I looked how ratings of attractiveness vary according to the interest that was described. According to the theory of sexual selection, women should find men the most attractive who display musical characteristics. In this study the male and female confederates only displayed an interest in music, sport, movies, videogames, and literature. This means that in the music condition the actor stated (in a video recording) that they 'listened to music all the time' and it was their 'favourite thing to do' they also pointed to all the CD's and vinyl they collected as proof of their fandom. The script lines were consistent for all five conditions and only the interest changed e.g. 'I love ___' and 'I ____ all the time' or '_____ is my favourite thing to do'. The important point is that the actor never said they play a musical instrument or that they are in a band. This is important because previous research has shown that being a 'musician is seen as very attractive. Similarly, the actor never claims that they make movies, write books, and play on a sports team. The only exception is the videogame condition, where they in fact play videogames. To reiterate, they are simply a consumer of one of these activities. I am interested if by only expressing an interest in music can increase the attraction rating of my actor or actress. So if an association with an activity which is perceived as being creative makes people perceive the opposite sex actor as attractive. (Note: the base line attractiveness rating for my male and female actor has been determined from a previous study and found to be on average 7 out of 10).

My hypothesis comes from evolutionary theory regarding the influence of certain characteristics that may signal genetic quality to potential mates. I want to understand if a preference for music has evolved via the process known as sexual selection. If so, then men who show an interest in music should be rated higher on dimensions of creativity, intelligence, attraction and personality then men who show any other interests. Women were also rated higher when they showed an interest in music versus any other interest, but not as highly as men. An interest in videogames is rated as least attractive as determined by scores on the validated scales of attractiveness, intelligence, creativity and personality. The effect was larger for men. Conclusion: music is a good fitness indicator but more so for men. This is likely because sexual selection is essentially the ability to pass on ones genes to the next generation. This process results in a distinct pattern of sex differences between males and females, with females placing greater emphasis on the resources that a potential mate has access to, whereas males place greater emphasis on physical cues that signal reproductive viability. Creativity then is seen as a valuable resource which is sought after by females when selecting a mate. Creativity is operationalized in this study as an interest in music (I need literature to back this up).

Its important to understand that evolutionary theory does not apply to each person as an individual; no single choice is entirely justified by evolutionary theory. Rather these are principles that apply to humans as a group, within which there is room for a wide array of variance. Instead, this is intended to apply to our overall tendencies. This means that if your primary interest is music, literature, sports, video games or movies, this does not necessarily reflect how other people see you.

This is a double blind study conducted with introductory psychology students who volunteer and receive credit for participating.

Other instructions:

The MAJORITY of literature review must come from peer psychology reviewed journals. Books may be used as sources. Newspapers, magazines, letters to the editor and other comments, and also online encyclopaedias such Wikipedia cannot be used as sources.

Basically, I have designed and conducted the experiment and I need help with writing it up as to not have it sound like a dyslexic 5th grader wrote it (I'm the dyslexic). I will put in the data in myself and work it in to the conclusion.

Solution

Title:
Will An Interest In Music Be A Fitness Indicator For Men?
Length:
12 pages
(3445 Words)
Style:
APA

Preview

Attraction and Creativity: Will an Interest in Music Be a Fitness Indicator for Men

Introduction

Creativity has become one of the key determinants of attraction in the different sexes (Gabrielsson, 2009, p. 20). The theory of sexual selection states that, women should find men who display musical characteristics more attractively (Gabrielsson, 2009, p. 34). Creativity is the condition where, a person associates himself with a specific activity. In the study conducted, males who displayed a liking in music, attracted females at a higher degree than those who displayed a liking in other activities, such as video games. In the same case, females whose main hobby was music, also attracted the male gender the most. These findings concur with those from previous researches, which show that musicians are extremely attractive (Becknell et al., 2008). With sexual selection, which is the ability to pass on one’s genes to the coming generation, there has been a great difference between males and females. Females are seen to emphasize greatly on the resources that the male in question can access. Males however, have a very different view, emphasizing on creativity, which is an indicator of productivity. Therefore, creativity, which is in this case an interest in music, is seen as a valuable resource (Cobb & Boettcher, 2007).

Deniz (2010) argues that, in most cases, females look for this creativity aspect in their potential male partners. Often, different psychologists, perceive musicians as having an enormous brain, being extraordinarily conscious, or having a learning culture (Cobb & Boettcher, 2007). Others have associated it with the Darwinian theory of natural survival. Thus, music is centered on competition survival.